Re: A challenge to Tom Roberts re LET,SR and an alternative.
- From: Tom Roberts <tjroberts137@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:10:17 -0600
John Kennaugh wrote:
My understanding - from a previous post of Tom's - is that in LET
what you do (in theory) is apply the Lorentz transforms to and from
the aether FoR. The fact that it is impossible to identify the aether
frame is less of a problem than it would seem because the Lorentz
transforms are such that you can arbitrarily choose any FoR as the
aether frame without affecting the answer.
Not quite. In LET you must, of course, choose the ACTUAL ether frame. It
was not apparent to Lorentz that one could not do this via any
experiment -- he simply assumed that there is such a frame and one
naturally computes using it, whatever it is. It is serendipity that the
inability to experimentally identify this frame does not matter, because
the choice of the ether frame does not affect the predictions of the theory for any experiment.
I am not concerned here with the intellectual route which led to SR
or the intellectual differences between SR and LET merely in
mathematical terms how the two theories are related. In LET one can
arbitrarily choose any FoR as the ether frame so the option is open
to always choose the observer's FoR as the ether frame.
Mathematically SR is the equivalent of doing just that which is why
SR and LET are mathematically equivalent.
Close enough, as long as one remembers this applies only to EXPERIMENTAL PREDICTIONS.
Now it occurs to me that this, the SR approach, is actually one of
two possible approaches which would rid LET maths of the totally
arbitrary and unnecessary complication of an aether FoR.
That is not really "the SR approach", that is, rather, your perversion of SR to force its round peg into the square hole that is LET.
One simply cannot "rid" LET of the ether frame.
Computationally one can take a shortcut, as you say.
The other is
to do LET maths always choosing the source frame as the aether frame.
But it simply does not make sense for the ether to be at rest in
multiple frames. This totally ignores the underlying theoretical basis
of LET.
Today SR has no pretensions to address physical processes, it is
simply mathematical modelling,
This is not merely SR, but all theories of modern physics. We have
learned a thing or three since 1904.
In the abstract, it should be QUITE CLEAR that the most that human
beings can aspire to is to make models of the world -- we can never
actually "know" what Nature herself is really doing. We can only make models and test them, which is known as science.
Again considering it from the perspective of LET then what SR does is
change 'aether frame' every time you change observer.
No. You are attempting to apply ancient terminology to SR. The words
simply do not fit. You need to LEARN SR, and its vocabulary.
Now ballistic theory is also the *mathematical* equivalent of making
the source frame and aether frame one and the same
Not at all! No ballistic theory includes relativistic kinematics. These
three claims are mutually inconsistent: "particles obey relativistic
kinematics", "light is ballistic", and "light is described by QED".
Indeed, I strongly suspect they are inconsistent if the third is
replaced by "light is an EM wave" (which is also inconsistent with
zillions of observations, but is more in line with your self-limited discussions).
Later you said:
LET does provide an interpretation the modern version of SR offers
none. One is maths + an interpretation which no one likes the other
is just maths.
You use an archaic meaning of "interpretation". In modern physics, an interpretation of a theory is a description of the quantities that appear in its equations. SR certainly has that.
Tom Roberts
.
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